An exploration of the 1897 Red River Valley League with teams from Fargo, Grand Forks, Moorhead, and Wahpeton-Breckenridge. The league featured future major league players, local heroes, reckless characters, economic unrest, and spirited rivalries.

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

On This Date: Four Pitchers and No Luck

July 9, 1897

True to form, the Divorcees returned
to their familiar offensive funk in game three of their series against Grand Forks. The club
managed just four singles against the Senators starter Hoar. With that
performance, Gus Munch’s chances were doomed from the start, but the Fargo
lefty was not sharp anyway and asked to be removed after surrendering four runs
in the third inning. Fargo would use three more men to pitch before the game
was done, including position players John Murphy and Bill Zink. The GFPD
observed “Four of Fargo’s pitchers were killed and over the grisly corpses
Grand Forks piled eleven runs and hits innumerable…” (July 10) The use of four
pitchers in a nine inning game was exceptionally rare during this era of
baseball and shows just how disastrous the outing was for the Divorcees. As a
result of the ever-changing lineup, Deacon Phillippe found himself called upon
to play left field later in the game. The Fargo defense did not help matters by
committing seven errors, but homeruns from Joe Marshall and catcher Jake
Bouchert were more than enough to lift Grand Forks to an 11-0 victory. All
things considered, the final score could have been much worse.